Kula Cottage, Kula Hi

From last (Tuesday) night.

Oh what an ass-kicking climb out of the crater. But first the good stuff.

The crater, solitude.
11:52Pm woke up for the lunar eclipse. What a once in a lifetime experience. Lunar eclipses aren't as rare as solar ones, but the timing. Us in the middle of the volcano with nothing to block or pollute the light and a lunar eclipse. Absolutely divine timing.

The moon went from streetlight-bright to red and dark. We sat out for an hour together and I stayed out another alone lying on the ground in my down bag.

5:45am Up again for the sunrise. Our Nene friend came back just after the sunrise. The Nene is the state bird that is the result of some wayward Canadian geese landing on the islands and like many Americans, never leaving. They've had a rough go of it, but a captive breeding program has rebounded their numbers and we saw them all about or cabin. They go around in pairs for the most part. We had one poor old lonely guy whose pair must have been lost. They were unafraid of us and we spent alot of the morning photographing and watching them.

Just a side note. Freeze dried chicken terriaki is much better than freeze dried scrambled eggs.

The valley floor that was yesterday quiet and deserted, this morning filled us with noisy birds. I wish I could have identified them all. I know for sure we saw the Nene and the ringed neck pheasant and maybe the elusive Pu'u.

The first leg of the hike from the Kapaloa cabin to the Holua cabin was fairly easy. Pele's paintbox was an amazing palate of red, yellow, silver, and green minerals laid out like swatches on a paint pad.

We walked into fog as we descended into the second cabin (Holua - just a pit stop for us today) and it stayed with us the rest of the day. . . all the way up the switchbacks. all the way up the 1300 vertical feet over 3 miles. Was that all? The number doesn't sound like that much. . . but let me tell you how it feels. Even the super-buff ex-military dad climbing in front of us was collapsed against the tire of our rental car when we got to the top. (We gave him and his daughter a ride to their car.) The last few miles were a sheer test of will. Our bodies had long ago given out and it was just grace and muscle memory the rest of the way.

This trail was but into the mountain by the Civilian Conservation Core in the 30s. They cut into the solid rock by hand. These were the same people who dug the Skokie lagoons. (Our last preparation hike was around these lagoons)

The alternative exit would have been back our the way we came. This trail is called the sliding sands trail. The name isn't symbolic. It's 4 miles of volcanic sand that descends from the summit at 10000 feet to the crater floor at 6500 feet. That nearly 3 times the elevation that we had to reclaim on the switchback trail. And as we learned on one of our weekend hikes in the Indian Dunes State park, for ever 2 foot stride you take uphill in sand, you slide back 6 inches. All that's to say that the switchback weren't all that bad. Okay they were bad, but I'd do it again (after my muscles stop aching).

We checked into the Kula cottage after coming down off of Haleakala. It's a small one bedroom cottage just down the road from where we stayed on our first night. There's no view, but there is a washing machine! We were happy to make that trade as we threw all of our dust + mist = caked-on-crust clothes straight in.

Aloha for now.